Translating Jita Jonah (part 9)

Neema, Ben, Magesa and Magoma holding the first EVER copies of Jita Jonah!

This is it. The final step.We finished the book of Jonah in the Jita language. Bwana Yesu asifiwe! (Lord Jesus be praised!)

These were all the steps...

Step 1 - DRAFTING: The Jita translators adapted the book from Swahili to Jita.
Step 2 - TRANSLATION ADVISOR CHECKING: I studied the text to make sure the meaning of the original was communicated accurately.
Step 3 - COMMUNITY TESTING: We invited Jita speakers to listen to the text and help us make improvements.
Step 4 - CONSULTANT CHECKING: We worked with a veteran Bible translator to make improvements.
Step 5 - SPELL CHECKING: We carefully checked the text for spelling, punctuation, grammar and any other errors.
Step 6 - READ ALOUD CHECK: We read the text out loud, watched for punctuation and listened for naturalness.
Step 7 - TYPESETTING: We designed a printer-ready copy of Jonah with illustrations and captions.
Step 8 - PRINTING: We worked with our Literacy Department to print Jonah on the risograph machine.

And now the most exciting step of all...

Step 9 - DISTRIBUTION

It was a fun day. It was fun to receive the first copies of Jonah hot off the press (literally). It was fun to hand a copy to Neema and Magesa and Magoma, the Jita translators. It was fun to say "thank you" to them for all their hard work. It was fun to deliver a copy to our next door neighbor, who is a Jita man, and watch him immediately gather his fellow Jita people and start reading the book of Jonah. It was fun to take copies of Jonah out to the village and sell them for $.30 each. (The money goes to our office to cover a portion of the printing costs). It was fun to watch people smile when they read the book of Jonah in the Jita language for the first time EVER!

It's fun to think that Jita people can now learn that Yahweh is the God of heaven, who made the sea and dry land (Jonah 1:9). They will discover that Yahweh sees all the evil that people do (Jonah 1:2). They can read how Yahweh exercises sovereign control over all of his creation (Jonah 1:4, 1:17, 2:10, 4:6, 4:7, 4:8). They can rejoice to see that Yahweh rescues his people when they repent of their sins (Jonah 2:9). They will be excited to see that Yahweh shows mercy to pagan nations who repent (Jonah 3:5, 4:11). They will savor the glorious truth that Yahweh is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster (Jonah 4:2).

Let's pray that the Jita people soon receive the New Testament so that they can believe in Jesus, the one greater than Jonah.

Jesus answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here." (Matthew 12:39-41)

We finished the book of Jonah back in September 2013. Since then, we've been working hard on the book of Acts and the letters of John. Please pray for us as we work diligently to translate God's Word into the Jita language. And pray for the Jita people. Pray that they will be ready to accept God's Word and repent of their sins and believe in Jesus.

Translating Jita Jonah (part 8)

Samson and Magoma printing Jita Jonah on the risograph machine

Ok, we're done with the translation part of preparing the book of Jonah in the Jita language.

These were the steps so far...

Step 1 - DRAFTING: The Jita translators adapted the book from Swahili to Jita.
Step 2 - TRANSLATION ADVISOR CHECKING: I studied the text to make sure the meaning of the original was communicated accurately.
Step 3 - COMMUNITY TESTING: We invited Jita speakers to listen to the text and help us make improvements.
Step 4 - CONSULTANT CHECKING: We worked with a veteran Bible translator to make improvements.
Step 5 - SPELL CHECKING: We carefully checked the text for spelling, punctuation, grammar and any other errors.
Step 6 - READ ALOUD CHECK: We read the text out loud, watched for punctuation and listened for naturalness.
Step 7 - TYPESETTING: We designed a printer-ready copy of Jonah with illustrations and captions.

Now we get to print the book of Jonah....

Step 8 - PRINTING

This might not seem like a big deal but think about it...this is the first time the book of Jonah has been published in the Jita language...EVER! It's a huge deal. We worked with our friend Samson from the Literacy Department. He helped us choose the cardstock for our cover and then he copied the cover on our risograph machine. Here's a quick video..

Our SIL office here in Musoma just recently received this risograph machine. Now our Literacy Department can print their own reading primers and transition literacy booklets. And in the Translation Department we can print our own (short) books of the Bible. This is much better and faster than sending the job to a print shop in Dar es Salaam.

After Samson printed the covers, he printed the inside pages, lined them up and stapled them together. We decided we would start with a print run of 200 copies. There are 205,000 Jita people in the Mara region so hopefully we will need to print more copies later. (Let's pray!)

Stay tuned for the most exciting step of all...Distribution!

Rhino-beetle

Check out the latest discovery in "Wild Africa."

Translating Jita Jonah (part 7)

WOW! It's a long process to prepare a book of the Bible for publication.

Step 1 - DRAFTING: The Jita translators adapted the book from Swahili to Jita.
Step 2 - TRANSLATION ADVISOR CHECKING: I studied the text to make sure the meaning of the original was communicated accurately.
Step 3 - COMMUNITY TESTING: We invited Jita speakers to listen to the text and help us make improvements.
Step 4 - CONSULTANT CHECKING: We worked with a veteran Bible translator to make improvements.
Step 5 - SPELL CHECKING: We carefully checked the text for spelling, punctuation, grammar and any other errors.
Step 6 - READ ALOUD CHECK: We read the text out loud, watched for punctuation and listened for naturalness.

We're almost ready to publish the book of Jonah. But first, we format the text correctly in a step called...

Step 7 - TYPESETTING

Here's a portion of Jonah chapter 3 in the Jita language. It's all ready for publication.

For this step, we worked with a typesetter in the UK to produce a printer-ready PDF of the book of Jonah. We went back and forth by email examining our section headings, choosing a font that is clear and readable, selecting illustrations, writing captions, obtaining copyright permission for illustrations, designing white space and margins, writing the book introduction and finding the best wording for our title.

For our title, we chose...

"The Book of the Prophet Jonah in the Jita Language"

We even got to choose the color of the front cover? Any guesses?????

Pork Day Hallelujah

YAY!!! It's Pork Day....



We bought 3 kilos of pork and it arrived freshly slaughtered, still warm, in plastic bags, with hair and bone and etc. Jeannette chopped it, cleaned it and prepared it for cooking. This time she put some in the freezer for pork stir fry in the future and she put a big chunk in the slow cooker with her homemade thyme bar-b-q sauce. It was AMAZING! She even made cornbread and coleslaw to go with it.

Thank you, God, for making pigs.

Thank you, God, for my wise, wonderful, good cook wife.

Translating Jita Jonah (part 6)

So we continue our series about translating Jonah in the Jita language...

Step 1 - DRAFTING: The Jita translators adapted the book from Swahili to Jita.
Step 2 - TRANSLATION ADVISOR CHECKING: I studied the text to make sure the meaning of the original was communicated accurately.
Step 3 - COMMUNITY TESTING: We invited Jita speakers to listen to the text and help us make improvements.
Step 4 - CONSULTANT CHECKING: We worked with a veteran Bible translator to make improvements.
Step 5 - SPELL CHECKING: We carefully checked the text for spelling, punctuation, grammar and any other errors.

Now it's time for...
Step 6 - READ ALOUD CHECK

Neema, Ben and Magoma reading the book of Jonah in Jita

This is a fun step because we move away from our desks and computers and go outside into the fresh air. We read the whole book as a narrative, as a story, and listen to how it sounds.



As we read, we listen for natural pauses in the story and make sure that our punctuation is helpful to the reader. We also make sure that the story flows easily and that each paragraph is connected to the next. We even discovered a few phrases that were not clear so we made some minor adjustments.

This particular day was exciting because as we were reading out loud, two of the office workers, also Jita speakers, stopped their work because they were entranced by the sound of God's Word in their own language. Again, I find myself thanking God for the privilege of serving with this team.

fresh eggs

I just bought fresh eggs from a guy who has a house full of chickens. Not a chicken coop...a house. When I say fresh I mean warm and gooey with feathers stuck on them. And they're really good eggs!

And do you want to hear the best part? We leave our eggs sitting on the kitchen counter....for weeks! They don't need to be refrigerated. Welcome to Tanzania.